It’s widely assumed by the soldiers of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, that Massoud killed two of their buddies.

But Capt. Michael Kolton, 29, the company’s commander, won’t ask the former insurgent leader about it.

“I don’t want to know the answer.”

Less than a week after a roadside bomb killed two of Kolton’s men in July, Massoud showed up at his austere mountain base after dark and sat down for tea. The clandestine encounter, one of many Kolton says he had with militants in northern Kunar, set the ball rolling for Massoud’s defection from the insurgency — along with 100 of his fighters — in February.